1. Field of the Invention:
This invention relates to cooling towers for power generation stations and more particularly to wet cooling towers with a plurality of upwardly inclined exhaust conduits that direct exhaust gases from a gas turbine into the cooling tower to eliminate the plume.
2. Description of the Prior Art:
In steam turbogenerator power plants, either nuclear or fossil fuel, the heat from the exhaust steam of the turbine has typically been transferred to cooling water from rivers, lakes or some other natural water supply. However, with the increased size and number of power plants, the availability of natural sources of cooling water has decreased, necessitating the use of cooling towers for many new installations.
Dry cooling towers, wherein circulating water is cooled by transferring heat to the air by plate or tube heat transfer surfaces, require extremely large heat transfer surfaces. Dry cooling towers may be so large that they may house a complete power plant within the cooling tower. (See U.S. Pat. No. 3,150,267)
Wet cooling towers, wherein the circulating water is brought into direct contact with the air, under many weather conditions produce a plume, which is both a nuisance and a problem, even though it is essentially pure water. The plume often causes local fogging and icing conditions on nearby roadways in winter months.
To eliminate the plume from wet cooling towers, the exhaust stack from a boiler has been centrally disposed within the cooling tower to raise the height to which the effluent leaving the cooling tower flows, see U.S. Pat. No. 3,488,960.
It is also known that in nuclear power plants, which reject large amounts of heat to circulating water, waste heat from gas turbines can be utilized to superheat the steam and heat feedwater to improve the overall cycle efficiency of generating power as discussed in a paper entitled Gas Turbines for Superheat in a Nuclear Power Plant by V. P. Buscemi and C. E. Hanton, which was presented at the American Power Conference, April 1970.